I remember the days of software development when we had huge war room meetings to get status from each team lead. The project manager would manage these 2 or 3 hour meetings and hope to goodness that everyone would remember what requirements need to be updated, who is to fix which bug and well, the list goes on. The closer we got to the end of the development cycle, the longer and more frequent these meetings would be. What if all the managers, team leads and developers had a dashboard to evaluate progress and update status? What a concept!

There are many development tools that help teams communicate perfectly throughout the software development cycle. These tools will help enable teams to follow good software development habits and team communication will improve. Just understanding these tools and following the guidelines will get the team communicating like never before. I'll continue to mention different development tools that help you develop quality code quicker, throughout my blogs, but today I will focus on Rational Requirements Composer and Rational Team concert.

Rational Team Concert collaborative development environment connects teams so they can work together to simplify, automate and govern software delivery in real time. Project mangers and others can gain greater visibility into individual and team work. They can reduce overhead balance resources and provide real-time insight. In addition, you can track project progress with dashboards that include real-time project statuses. Now this is every manager's dream to manage and view the status of a development project, without having huge war room meetings.

Another great product, Rational Requirements Composer helps teams define and use requirements effectively across the project lifecycle. The whole team creates and uses requirements. Better, faster requirements lead to less project rework, faster time to market, and better business outcomes. The earlier you know and manage your requirements, the more money you will save in rework. Get your customers and stakeholders involved early and manage your requirements so that everyone understands and communicates updates and priorities.

Now couple Rational Team Concert with Rational Requirements Composer and you have a match made in heaven. The beauty is that IBM® Rational® Requirements Composer and Rational Team Concert are integrated. Check out the demo below and learn how the integration between IBM® Rational® Requirements Composer and Rational Team Concert highlights the capabilities that ensure project deliverables stay aligned to current business goals and requirements. Specifically, see examples of how to create a link from a requirement in a vision document artifact in Rational Requirements Composer to the work item stored in Rational Team Concert. Then see how to use filters to query across all the products on the Jazz platform. These capabilities help reduce project risk, reduce rework, and increase productivity.

Check out the demo! Align business with Rational Requirements Composer and Rational Team Concert